Autonomously driving vehicles are a long-term trend in the area of mobility. Vehicles which no longer rely on control by a human being permit not only the safety and efficiency of traffic systems to be increased but also their flexibility. This occurs, for example, in motor vehicles in that a user of the motor vehicle leaves it at any desired location, the motor vehicle automatically drives to a parking position, and the user requests the motor vehicle for further use from another location. A particular meaning is assigned here to the determination of the relative position of the motor vehicle and of the user. There are two basic approaches to this in the prior art.
One possibility is to measure the absolute position of the motor vehicle and of the user. The user can also transmit his position to the motor vehicle, for example, via a radio link. However, a determination of the location of the user by the motor vehicle, or vice versa, is made difficult by restricted data transmission paths, for example, owing to parking areas which are built over or interfering contours of buildings. Determining the location of the user by means of the motor vehicle proves particularly difficult. Available methods such as GPS, radio transmission or optical measuring methods quickly reach the limits of their accuracy. Identification of the user proves problematic, in particular when there is no line-of-sight link between the user and the motor vehicle.
In addition, one possibility comprises defining in advance a transfer zone for the motor vehicle for further use. The user can then request the transfer of the vehicle into the transfer zone. However, the flexibility is limited in terms of the location for the further use. Potential unavailability of the agreed transfer zone, for example, as a result of occupation, also proves problematic.
Disclosed embodiments provide a method for the user-defined provision of a vehicle which does not require absolute measurement of the location of the motor vehicle or of the user.
Disclosed embodiments relate to a method for the user-defined provision of a vehicle in which a parking position in a parking region is identified and driven to automatically by the vehicle or with guidance by a user, and at the request of the user the vehicle drives automatically to a transfer location in the parking region for further use. There is provision that a trajectory which is travelled along as far as the parking position within the parking region is stored, and the transfer location can be defined at any desired point on this trajectory.
This provides that an absolute measurement of the position of the vehicle within the parking region is no longer necessary, and an absolute measurement of the position of the user can be completely dispensed with. Since the parking region is known and the trajectory of the vehicle is known, the location of the vehicle within the parking region can be reconstructed. The vehicle can then be sent to a defined point within the parking region, which point has already been driven to at least once. Knowledge of the location of the user is therefore no longer necessary.
A trajectory includes position data and time data which are linked to one another. The position data describe a path in their sequence. Representation of the path is sufficient to define a transfer location for the vehicle. The position data on which the path is based are not measured. They are reconstructed, for example, from vehicle data such as an angular position of the wheels with respect to time. Therefore, all the features of a trajectory with respect to the storage are present. In the context of the disclosed embodiments, the term trajectory is used even if in some cases only the path is of direct significance for the method. Basically all known parking regions such as, for example, public areas of roads, parking facilities or private plots of land and buildings are considered as parking regions.